During AMD's Analyst Day today, the company announced several news bits concerning its LIVE! initiative. One of the highlights day was AMD's announcement that it's LIVE! platform was doing much better than Intel's Viiv, at least in retail sales. According to figures obtained from retailers nationwide, AMD LIVE! computers were outperforming Viiv PCs anywhere from 5-percent to 40-percent in the most recent week of December.

This figure does not include information from direct-to-customer sales, such as that from Dell, which arguably constitutes a major portion of Intel Viiv sales. The data also was only polled from U.S. vendors and did not take into account Viiv or LIVE! sales in HTPC hot-spots like Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

The platform has seen a huge push by AMD in the last quarter of 2006, especially after the company completed the purchase of ATI Technologies. One of the key aspects of LIVE! was to integrate all major components together. For Intel, this was easy as it has been developing both processors and chipsets for years for various markets. With AMD and ATI now one, AMD is definitely taking advantage of ATI's chipset portfolio and expertise.

AMD's strategy with LIVE! going forward addresses a few key areas for the company: